The Choice at the Crossroads

1 Samuel 8:1-3 ESV

1 When Samuel became old, he made his sons judges over Israel. 2 The name of his firstborn son was Joel, and the name of his second, Abijah; they were judges in Beersheba. 3 Yet his sons did not walk in his ways but turned aside after gain. They took bribes and perverted justice.

Every four years in this nation of ours, we have the opportunity to make a choice and cast a vote as to who it is that we desire to lead the country as our president.

Now, voting I believe is a privilege that we all should take advantage of, but I believe that sometimes we go to the ballot box with the wrong motives.

You see, the authorities, even the governing authorities have been ordained by God for our good. Ultimately it is God Who is working behind the scenes as it is He Who is always in control.

The authorities that are not behind the scenes, the ones that we can see, political leaders, church leaders, community leaders are all merely those whom God is using to accomplish His own purposes on earth.

God’s will is always going to be accomplished no matter what, no matter who may hold this or that office. Because that is the case, we always need to look to God and only to God to lead us, to guide us, and to see us through any kind of mess that we may find ourselves in.

Because if God’s will is always going to be accomplished, then we have to reason that even the mess that we may find ourselves in is all a part of God’s plan for us. If it is God’s will that we find ourselves in a mess, then obviously the desire of God is that we look to Him to get us out of the mess, so that He may be glorified through it.

And if it happens to be the case that our leaders have a part in getting us out of the mess that we are in, then we must recognize that the only reason why that is, is because God chose to use that leader in that capacity. Therefore, it is still God, and not the leader Who has gotten us out of that mess.

These are all plain, straightforward, indisputable facts. But though that is the case, still so many of us will go to the ballot boxes every election and say to ourselves, “This nation is in a real mess right now, and I know that the only way we’re going to get out of this mess is if we vote the president out and we put this other guy in office!” or we will say, “We may be in a mess, but the only hope that we have to get out of it is if we vote to keep our current president in office!”.

In other words, we find ourselves in a crisis and rather than looking to God to get us out of the mess that we find ourselves in, we look to man to do it.

Now, the reason why I think we get this way is because all we see is the man, the instrument that God is using and thus we forget that it is God Who is using the man, the instrument. And because of this we just look to the man, the instrument that God is using and we act like it all depends on him.

And so rather than looking to God, we look to man.

It seems like we do this quite a bit. And I’m not just referring to the political arena either. No, what I mean is that it seems like in almost every area of our lives, when we face a hard situation, so often we find ourselves looking to and depending on what can be seen rather than depending on the One Who has wisely saw fit for us to go through these hard situations for His own glory.

It certainly is not always an easy task, but God does not call us to try to fix the situations that we find ourselves in, rather, He calls us to wait, to endure, to be still and know that He is God.

In the three sermons that I am going to be presenting to you here in the month of May, we are going to be looking at a narrative in which the people of Israel found themselves in one of these situations where they were in a mess and had to decide if they were going to try to look to external remedies or if they were going to patiently and faithfully wait for and look to the Lord to deliver them as we work through the narrative found in 1 Samuel 8:1-9.

This narrative takes place at the end of the era of the judges in Israel. And what had consistently occurred during this era was Israel would find themselves abandoning their worship of the one true God and turning to the worship of the gods of the surrounding nations.

When this would happen, God would give Israel over to be conquered by the surrounding nations who they tried so hard to mimic. But then after being conquered, the people of Israel would eventually cry out to the Lord, pleading with Him to deliver them.

It would be at this point that God would send a deliverer, called a “judge”, who would drive the conquering nations out of Israel and then this “judge” would lead the people… until that judge died.

But then after that judge would die, the people would usually turn their backs on the Lord once again, and so they would have to repeat the same process all over again.

Well, Samuel was the last God-ordained judge of Israel. And Samuel was a faithful judge. He led Israel in the ways of the Lord and God blessed the people throughout Samuel’s time in leadership.

But then there came a time when a change in leadership was taking place in the land.

We see this in the first verse of our reading, where it says:

1 Samuel 8:1 ESV

1 When Samuel became old, he made his sons judges over Israel.

So, we see that what is described here took place when Samuel had become old. Now, we all know that most of the time, the older that we get, the wiser we get. But there eventually comes a point in time when we know that we need to step down and let someone a little bit younger hold the position of leadership.

Well, this time had come for Samuel. He had reached an age in which he knew that it was time for someone younger to fill his role as judge over Israel. And because that was the case, Samuel decided to insert his two sons as judges over Israel.

So, let’s go ahead and take a look at these two sons who Samuel chose to succeed him in verse 2 of our reading, where it says:

1 Samuel 8:2 ESV

2 The name of his firstborn son was Joel, and the name of his second, Abijah; they were judges in Beersheba.

So, we see that the firstborn son of Samuel was named Joel, and the meaning of the name Joel is, “The Lord is God”. So, that sounds like a good, godly name for a person with a lot of potential for exceptional leadership.

His second born son was named Abijah, and meaning of that name is, “My Father is Yah”. Yah is short for Yahweh, a name for God. Once again, that sounds like a name for a person with a lot of potential for exceptional, godly leadership.

And our reading says that these two judged Israel from Beersheba which was known as one of the uttermost cities in the allotted territory of the tribe of Judah.

So, these two sons had a lot going for them. Their names suggested that they would be godly leaders in an influential city.

But though their names made it seem as though they would be great leaders for the people, the last verse in our reading, verse 3 reveals to us their true character, where we read:

1 Samuel 8:3 ESV

3 Yet his sons did not walk in his ways but turned aside after gain. They took bribes and perverted justice.

As was said, Samuel was an exceptionally godly leader. But we read here that his sons whom he appointed to succeed him did not walk in his ways, they were not godly leaders, though their names suggested that they were.

Rather, our reading says that these sons of Samuel turned aside after their own personal gain by taking bribes from the rich and influential and deciding in their favor, thus perverting true justice from prevailing. Things that God explicitly abhorred.

So, after the people and elders of Israel found themselves in this situation, they knew that they had to do something about it. They needed to figure out how were they were going to remedy this bad situation.

In times past, when they had found themselves in situations like this, they would always eventually come to the point when they would cry out to God for deliverance, knowing that only He could give them legitimate deliverance.

So, they could always do that again… or, they can make the decision to try to take care of this situation themselves, that this time, their wisdom will be greater than God’s wisdom, that they can get through this and deliver themselves without God’s intervention.

As I said at the beginning of this message, we frequently find ourselves in the same situation. We often look to the outward circumstances that we face and we reason that if there is to be deliverance, it has to come from ourselves, from our own reasoning, from our own strength.

A lot of times we fail to see and legitimately believe the reality that God is in absolute control. Furthermore, there are sadly a lot of times when we fail to legitimately believe that God’s ways are higher than our ways, that they are in fact better than our ways.

Beloved, let us humbly recognize that our strength is not strength at all. Let us humbly look to the Lord and depend on Him to give us what is truly good for us, trusting His wisdom and depending on His power alone.

Amen?